Tenko and The Baseball Team
by Monkey 2 Electric Boogaloo
Summary: OK, I lied about the "one shot" bit. In the same alternative universe as the last story, Himiko and Tenko are university students who have to take on the role of coaches to a middle school baseball team. This leads to a new adventure and to developments in their relationship...


**TENKO AND THE BASEBALL TEAM**

With a sigh, Himiko Yumeno scrolled down the screen of her laptop as she re-read, for the umpteenth time, what she had managed to write so far of her essay on the poems of Matsuo Basho. Her heart sank a little as she drew the reluctant conclusion that (a) this wasn't much and (b) what there was didn't go very far towards answering the question she had been asked - "How does Basho use nature in his work to convey his theme of the transience of all things?"

Having rapidly decided that "by writing about it", whilst an accurate answer, was just not going to be enough for the professor who would be marking the essay, she had tried giving examples of Basho doing so in the poems instead. Some way into this process, it had struck her that, actually, listing examples of someone doing something still wasn't really explaining how they were doing it. At that point, her progress ground to a halt completely, and she could only rue the day that she had decided to do a degree in Japanese because "I've been speaking it all my life, after all, so it'll be a piece of cake!"

"Nyeh…I have to hand this stupid thing in for marking in a few days' time!" she thought. "And I still have no idea how Basho used nature to convey the trans-thingummy of all whatsits! What a pain! Nyeh…who on earth gets that excited about cormorants catching fish and cherry blossom anyway? I mean, he lived in the seventeenth century…I bet there were all sorts of powerful mages then he could have been meeting instead."

With a determined stab of her finger, Himiko closed and saved the document in Word. She would go and make a nice cup of tea, she decided, then try and have a go at salvaging the essay by…well, she'd do _something_ , anyway.

As Himiko pottered over towards her tiny kitchen, the door of the flat burst open, and, with all the crushing inevitability of the Pope being Catholic, Tenko Chabashira burst in. Himiko had given up asking her friend to knock first now, and she knew better than to assume that Tenko entering in this way meant there was some sort of major crisis.

"Himiko, you have to help me! I have a major crisis to deal with!" declared Tenko.

"Hi, Tenko," said Himiko. "Nyeh…sit down, I was about to make some tea anyway. I'll just do you a cup as well."

Tenko plonked herself down on the couch, whilst Himiko busied herself with kettle and mugs. "Nyeh…so what's the problem, anyway?" she called over to the living room.

"We all have to do a work placement as part of the sports science course this year," explained Tenko. "Of course, it has to be in a sports-related workplace of some kind, like in a gym, or with a professional sports team or something like that. I was hoping to get into a school and do some coaching there. Well, the middle school I was hoping to get into phoned me today and said they'd only have me if I would do the job jointly with another student."

Himiko wandered in with two steaming mugs. "Nyeh…why on earth would they insist on that?"

Tenko took her tea with a grim look. "Oh, let me tell you why! They said they had "health and safety concerns if you were to do coaching on your own, given that we are a mixed school and what we hear about your issues with the opposite gender." It's…it's slanderous gossip! Someone's been spreading rumours about me being a misandrist! It's probably my course tutor…degenerate male!"

Himiko sat down on the couch next to her friend. "Nyeh…but Tenko, there was that whole incident with the man at the department store I bought my vacuum cleaner from. The one where we nearly both got arrested? And you had a fight with the President of the University Judo Society…"

"That wasn't a fight…that was an honourable bout fought to settle our differences!" interrupted Tenko.

"Nyeh...he still broke his wrist, though."

"It's not my fault he adheres to an outdated martial art and doesn't know how to fall properly," shrugged Tenko.

"Nyeh…and what about that guy on the Metro you tried to perform a citizen's arrest on?"

"He was harassing that poor girl! He had his hands all over her, his tongue in her mouth, and all anyone would do was look at him disapprovingly!"

"Tenko, she was his girlfriend and they were both drunk! Everyone just disapproved of them doing that in public! Nyeh…sometimes I wonder if you've got Axemurder's Syndrome or something. You just don't get when people are acting normally! The point is, all this stuff probably gets back to your course tutor, and no wonder he has to tell the school about it. I mean, if something goes wrong, some parent might sue them!"

Tenko took a sip from her mug and looked over at her diminutive companion defiantly. "So, I suppose you aren't going to help me do my placement, then?"

Himiko nearly spat out her mouthful of tea. "Nyeh…WHAT? Me? I don't know anything about coaching sport. I can't even play any sports! My high school gave me an exemption from PE so I could spend the time studying magic instead. Can't you get one of the other sports science students to help you? I have my own work to do."

Tenko sighed. "I tried asking around, and they all made excuses about being too busy. Himiko, you're my last hope! Come on, please; part of my grade for this year is riding on me completing this work placement. I'll make sure you don't have much to do in practice – all I need is for someone to be there with me. Is that too much to ask?" Her bottom lip began to quiver.

Himiko groaned to herself. This was absolutely not what she wanted to be doing…but she did owe Tenko more than one favour, and she hated the idea of deserting a friend in need.

"Nyeh…OK, Tenko, I'll do it. But in return, I'll expect some help with my own work. I mean, it's difficult enough getting it done normally, without having to take time off to run around after middle school kids."

Tenko grabbed Himiko's shoulders. "Help with your work? Fine! Anything! As long as you'll help me out, I don't care!"

"Nyeh…alright, then, what about this?" Himiko picked up her laptop from next to the couch, turned it on and opened her essay on Basho in the documents folder.

"Ah, Basho," said Tenko, "don't forget to put in something about the ideals of karumi."

"Nyeh…was she his girlfriend or something?" asked Himiko.

Tenko sighed, again. "No, Himiko, "karumi" meaning "lightness". It was his philosophy of writing." She scanned the essay for a bit, then said. "I think you've missed the point of this question."

"Nyeh…it has a point to it?"

"Well, the question assumes that Basho's poetry had a theme of things being transient, with no evidence. It's begging the question. Either it's just badly written or they want you to explain why you think his poems had that theme. Or didn't, whatever."

It took a few seconds for this to sink in, but when it did, Himiko's face lit up and she jumped up off the couch and tossed her pointy hat into the air with joy. Tenko felt her heart leap in her chest, as she always did at the sight of the young magician's outbursts of happiness.

"Yay! I _knew_ there was something more I was supposed to be doing with this. Nyeh…now I can write a load more stuff about Basho seeing violets on paths and hawks on cliffs and complete it! You're so clever sometimes, Tenko…just as long as there isn't a man involved, really."

Tenko smiled up at her, and mentally filtered out the last words of that final sentence. "So, can I tell my tutor you'll come to the school with me?"

"Nyeh…no problem!" said Himiko.

Of course, nine times out of ten, Tenko's cunning plan wouldn't have worked. Her tutor would have pointed out that Himiko wasn't doing sports science; someone in the Japanese department would have objected to her wasting valuable time on something not connected to studying literature; the school would have thought up some other excuse not to have to deal with Tenko.

However, Tenko's course tutor was determined not to see his department shamed by one of its students being deemed unacceptable, and the school head was an old student of his. Faced with a polite request from his sensei for a little flexibility, the head couldn't really say no.

And that's how Tenko and Himiko found themselves being given a tour of the middle school's sports facilities one afternoon by the PE teacher, Miss Nakamura.

"Hi. Well, this is the changing room, this is the gym and, as you can see, the sports field is just outside." She pointed out of the gym's large windows. Miss Nakamura had already been a teacher for longer than she originally planned and did not believe in making more work for herself than necessary.

"Nyeh…what do you need us to help you with?" asked Himiko.

"Baseball practice is on this afternoon every week, as is my favourite soap opera. I think you two will probably make more enthusiastic coaches for the team than me. Otherwise, the gym equipment could do with more cleaning than the school caretaker usually bothers with. Here's a key to his cupboard. The cleaning materials are in there."

"Any chance of us helping with any martial arts classes?" asked Tenko, hopefully.

"I heard all about your previous history from the head, Miss Chabashira, and we are not having you throwing twelve year olds around on gym mats using some technique you made up yourself."

"Nyeh…really?" said Himiko.

"Yes, really. Do you have some kind of verbal tic, Miss Yumeno?"

"Nyeh…I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

"I see. Let's go and meet the baseball team, then." Under her breath, Miss Nakamura muttered "Red hair too? Another poor girl fallen for a smooth-talking foreigner, I suppose." Himiko gritted her teeth and pretended not to have heard.

Miss Nakamura led the reluctant duo out of the school building, through the yard and on to the unkempt and poorly-mown grass of the playing field. A group of disconsolate-looking kids were standing around a baseball diamond, apparently aimlessly, although as soon as they noticed the figures coming towards them, they suddenly sprang into action and lined up to take their turn at the plate or stood behind bases, whilst a skinny boy with bad acne and glasses took the pitcher's spot.

"Hey, didn't I tell you kids to keep practising when I went inside!" shouted Miss Nakamura as the three of them came to the diamond. "Well, anyway, you can stop now. These ladies are your new coaches, Miss Chabashira and Miss Yumeno, so you'd better do what they say from now on! OK, ladies, you can take it from here!" And with that, she turned on her heel and started power-walking back towards the school building, as the players left their places and encircled Tenko and Himiko.

"Hey, don't we even get individual introductions!" shouted Tenko, at the teacher's retreating back.

"Sorry, my soap opera is beginning in five minutes! Work it out for yourself."

"Dammit!" muttered Tenko under her breath. "Er…OK. How do you do, fellow kids!" She and Himiko bowed to the pupils, who bowed back. "Right, then! Miss Yumeno and I are students at the university doing work placements here, and Miss Nakamura has asked us to help coach you. Well, it looks like a lot of things around here aren't too good. The baseball field is badly maintained, you aren't putting a lot of effort into practising and your teacher's more interested in some TV show than what you're doing. Well, that all ends here! From now on, we all work as a team, and there's, like, no I in team! Let's work hard, let's show commitment and let's play baseball! And…and probably kick lots of butt too!"

The kids (and, to be fair, Himiko) looked at Tenko as though she had just landed on the playing field in a giant robot, announced she was the vanguard of an intergalactic invasion who would destroy all sucker MCs and then launched into a rap, whilst everything around started exploding.

"We don't actually have any competitive matches scheduled, Miss," said a small dark-haired girl.

"We can change all that!" insisted Tenko.

"That thing about Miss Nakamura was…a bit disrespectful…maybe," murmured the skinny pitcher with acne.

"I speak as I find!" announced Tenko, defiantly. The kids glanced at each other nervously. You never knew where you might end up with people who believed in plain speaking – probably with them saying something weird and highly embarrassing.

Then, an ungainly boy at the fringe of the group piped up. He seemed to have just gone through the "getting taller" part of a pubescent growth-spurt but not yet managed the "getting wider to compensate" part, and as a result looked like two smaller kids who had stood on each others' shoulders and put on a trench-coat to sneak into an adults-only movie. His prominent Adam's apple seemed to move up and down his throat like a basketball being bounced repeatedly on the ground.

"Hey, this is rubbish! You have no idea what you're talking about! You're just students on a placement, not even teachers, and I bet you don't even know anything about baseball! You can't do all those things you said you were going to do! Tell me why we should even take any notice of you?"

Oh, crap, oh, crap, oh, crap…we're rumbled! thought Tenko to herself. She decided she'd better brazen it out. It was too late to do anything else.

"Hey, what's your name, you…you degenerate?!"

The ungainly boy pulled himself up to his full, considerable height. "My name is Dirk Diamond!"

The rest of the kids giggled. "For God's sake, Tanaka-san! Stop embarrassing the team like that!" said the pitcher, fiercely. He turned to Tenko. "His name isn't Dirk Diamond, Miss, he just says it is to look cool. He's Itsuki Tanaka. He isn't a secret agent, a wizard or a Pokemon trainer either, just a liar!"

"I never said I was a Pokemon trainer, Yomi!"

"Yes you did! You're a weirdo! And don't dare call me Yomi – I'm Kimura-san to you!"

"Well, anyway…you still haven't given me a reason why we should take notice of you, Miss."

Himiko knew instinctively what would come next, now Tenko had come to the limits of her persuasive powers. Fists would fly, and she couldn't allow that to happen. Before Tenko could say or do anything, she stepped up to Dirk, or Itsuki, and announced:-

"Nyeh…how about a magic trick? I'll make this pencil disappear."

She pulled a pencil from the inner pocket of her cloak, held it up so everyone could see it, wrapped her hands around it and opened them dramatically towards the pupils. The pencil had vanished.

There were gasps. "Oh, wow!" exclaimed the small dark-haired girl. Itsuki still wasn't buying it, though.

"That…that's not real magic! One of my friends knows how to do that! It's just a trick!"

"Nyeh…can your friend do this, though?" asked Himiko. She reached up behind Itsuki's ear, and pulled out the Ace of Spades from behind it. Then she pulled out the King of Spades from behind the ear of the boy standing next to him. She walked silently around the circle from pupil to pupil, pulling out the rest of the suit, card by card, from behind the ear of each of them. Since there were eighteen kids, because the team included a full reserve, from behind the last few ears she pulled bunches of flowers, coloured handkerchiefs and, for the last one, a full-sized porcelain sink, which she threw into the middle of the circle. It hit the ground with a heavy thud.

"Nyeh…I hope that _sinks_ any controversy," said Himiko. "Hee-hee-hee-hee!" Itsuki was speechless. Actually, so was everyone else. The kids then spent the rest of the afternoon playing baseball under Tenko and Himiko's direction without a peep from anyone. The standard of play was bad and the coaching wasn't much better, but it was a start.

"How on earth did you manage that?" Tenko asked Himiko, as they walked from the school to the bus stop at the end of the afternoon. "I mean, you can't have planned for it…"

"Nyeh…a good mage is always prepared for anything," said Himiko, with a shrug. "That was nothing really. My master once pulled a full-sized battleship from behind someone's ear. I didn't quite have enough mana to do that today, though…and it might have been a bit difficult to find space for the ship on the playing field."

"Sometimes, Himiko, you actually frighten me," said Tenko.

The first few weeks of Tenko's placement fell into a pattern. They would take the bus over to the middle school in the morning, cleaning the gym equipment and the floor (both pretty filthy; Miss Nakamura had, if anything, understated the caretaker's disdain for his duties). Then, they'd eat their packed lunches and in the afternoon, coach the team out on the playing fields.

In the beginning, the "coaching" mostly consisted of Tenko yelling at the kids to "hit that ball like it insulted your mother!", "now run like the wind!" and "throw those fastballs faster!" Tenko was not an expert in baseball by any means, but she had proven experience in shouting. Himiko mostly stood at the end of the line of players waiting to come up to bat, mumbled encouraging words and occasionally played tricks with coins to amuse them. Itsuki, in particular, was fascinated by these.

Himiko quickly realised that, whilst Itsuki seemed to have some natural talent with the bat, he was really not liked at all by the other kids, and not without reason. His behaviour was as awkward as his appearance and he had an irrepressible tendency to hog the limelight at the most inappropriate moments, usually by making ridiculous claims about his own achievements.

If someone's Dad had just got a new car, Itsuki's Dad had just got an Aston Martin. (Yomi: "I bet it's only a Nissan. And made in Sunderland too. The wheels are probably just glued on."). If the kids were all excited for some superhero movie that was about to come out, Itsuki would claim to have met a superhero or actually be a superhero. (Yomi: "Rubbish! You've been watching My Hero Academia all weekend again, you nerd.")

And, yes, he did once claim to be a wizard. Himiko had to laugh at that – of course, it was obvious to any real mage that Itsuki just didn't have a magical aura. She felt sorry for him, and took to engaging him in conversation whilst he was waiting to bat, if only to give his teammates a break from it, and nodded politely as he spouted more fantasies.

"You're very kind to Tanaka-kun, Miss," Rin, the small dark-haired girl, told her once. "But don't take too much notice of him. I was at elementary school with him, and he seemed normal then, but over the last few years he's just got weirder and weirder. It's sad."

Tenko remained suspicious of Itsuki. Just another degenerate, full of himself, she thought, although her heart couldn't help but flutter when she saw little Himiko reaching out to him.

After a while, Tenko finished reading a couple of books on baseball she had got out of the Sports Science department library, and her coaching began to involve less shouting and more specific advice on batting and pitching. She made Himiko promise to read some relevant literature as well, but in the end Himiko only managed a manga about a baseball team at a girls' school. It didn't really help with her knowledge of the game, but she did think the magic sentient bats which they also used to fight demons were pretty cool. And, with a bit of advice from Tenko, the marks she was getting on essays were improving.

One afternoon, one of the girls sprained her ankle whilst lunging for last base. Himiko volunteered to go to the nurse's office with her, and, since the girl needed supporting from both sides in order to walk, Itsuki went too. He was becoming increasingly inseparable from Himiko anyway, since she was one of the few people who would listen to him.

Tenko carried on coaching the rest of the team as they played, but as she did so, she noticed that Yomi seemed distracted for some reason. He kept glancing away from the game towards the school building.

"Hey there, Kimura-kun! What did I tell you about getting in the zone and not letting things distract you!" she called out to him.

"S…sorry, Miss Chabashira, but there's something really weird going on in the school!"

Tenko strode over to him. "What on earth are you talking about?"

Yomi pointed towards a second-floor window on the side of the building facing them. "It looks like someone's fallen asleep in that window."

"What? Where?" Tenko followed his pointing finger. It did indeed look like someone was face down on the window sill, with the top of their head facing out. It was an odd and unnatural posture. They must have been kneeling on the floor in order to do it.

"I think that's Miss Nakamura's office," said Yomi. They kept watching for a while and there was no sign of movement. Tenko sighed. She was not supposed to leave the kids unsupervised, but she had a bad feeling about this.

"OK, you guys," she announced. "I'm going to check this out, so you can take a five minute break. But if I catch any of you so much as taking a step off this baseball field, you'll all be doing push-ups when I get back! Twenty each for girls and forty for boys!"

The kids flopped gratefully to the ground, or wandered away from their places to chat to each other, as Tenko strode off towards the school purposefully. She kept her eye on the window, and the head wasn't moving at all. If it was just someone sleeping, they had ended up in a very strange and uncomfortable position.

Tenko and Himiko had not yet had a reason to go up to the second floor of the school yet, so it took her a while to find the door that matched the window. Fortunately, the teachers all had their names on the doors of their offices, so she could be sure it was the right one.

She knocked on the door. "Miss Nakamura? Are you in there?" There was no response.

She banged the door with a bit more force. "Hello? Miss Nakamura?" This time there was a response: a low moan.

"Oh, my God!" said Tenko. She grabbed the door handle and twisted it, but the door seemed to be locked. "Help! Help!" she cried out, "Someone's locked themselves in Miss Nakamura's office. Help!"

The door of one of the classrooms on the corridor burst open, and one of the other teachers, a burly, grey-haired man in his fifties, came running out. "What's wrong? Is someone trapped in there?"

"I think so," gasped Tenko. "But the door is locked."

The teacher paused for thought. "The caretaker has a master key to all of these rooms, but it's his day off today. The school office should have his phone number though." Then they heard another moan from within the office.

"Right, there's no time anyway!" announced Tenko. "Please stand back, sir!" She leaned back slightly, raised her right leg and sent her foot crashing into the lock. After several hefty kicks, it gave way and splintered, leaving the door to swing open.

"Woah, nice kicking action!" said the teacher, surprised.

"That's the power of Neo-Akido for you!" replied Tenko. They barged their way into the office. It had grey lino on the floor, apart from a square of carpet under the desk in the middle of the room. Two cheap black plastic chairs faced each other across the desk. But what hit you first when you entered the room was the smell. The acrid sharpness of vomit was mixed with the unmistakable undertone of alcohol.

Miss Nakamura was kneeling at the window behind her desk, face down on the window-sill. Near her knees was the wastepaper basket, filled with vomit. She continued to moan and groan incoherently.

"Miss Nakamura! Oh, my God," cried the teacher. "Are you alright?"

He went over to the window, and, with Tenko's assistance, lifted Miss Nakamura up. She was breathing, but her face and hair were stained with vomit and there was some on the sill too.

"Shorry…felt faint…tried to open the window…musht have fainted before I could," she mumbled. "Thanksh, Missh Shabashira."

"Look at this!" Tenko reached over to the desk with one arm and picked up an empty bottle. The label read "Finest Quality Sake."

As she glanced back at the male teacher she saw his eyes harden. "OK, Miss Chabashira…that is your name, isn't it? I think I can cope with Miss Nakamura from here. Thanks for all your help."

"But…"

"I think you're helping coach the baseball team, aren't you? Thought your face seemed familiar from somewhere. Better get back before they…ah, get up to mischief."

"Yes, actually I only came here because one of them noticed someone through this window from outside. But what should we do about this?" She waved the empty bottle. The teacher politely but firmly took it away from her.

"Don't worry, I'll sort that out. Come on, Miss Nakamura, let's get you into the toilets and get you cleaned up." He started to manoeuvre her out of the door. "By the way, Miss Chabashira, I'd be grateful if you didn't mention the part about the sake bottle to the pupils. We don't want to start harmful rumours flying around, do we? That would be…counter-productive."

Tenko was so shocked by what had just happened that she completely failed to react with her usual forcefulness. She just nodded meekly, and with a numb feeling in the pit of her stomach, followed the teacher as he led Miss Nakamura out of the office.

Blissfully unaware of all this drama, Himiko and Itsuki sat on a low wooden bench outside the nurse's office, waiting for her to finish treating the injured player. Itsuki was quieter than usual, not spouting his usual stream of unlikely-sounding anecdotes. In fact, the silence made Himiko feel a bit uncomfortable.

"Nyeh…penny for your thoughts, Tanaka-kun," she said, feeling she might soon regret this remark. Still, you had to be polite…

"Really? You know, I don't often get people asking me that. In fact, it's usually the other way around. I get told to shut up quite a lot."

"Nyeh…really?" said Himiko. "No way!" Her words had a hollow ring even to her own ears; she wasn't a great liar.

"Hah, yes I do! You must have seen the way the others react to me during practice, Miss Yumeno."

"Nyeh…yeah, I suppose I have. Doesn't that bother you at all? I mean, I'd get really upset if everyone treated me like that. Well, in fact, I did…when I was at school and training to be a magician, some people used to make fun of me about it. They'd call me "Himiko, the Magical Girl", ask me if I thought that Barry Blotter guy from the films was my boyfriend, and whether I kept a rabbit in my hat. Nyeh…actually, I did keep a rabbit in my hat for a while, but that's another story."

"But you didn't let it put you off becoming a magician, though."

"Well, no. But when you have a talent, you have to develop it. Nyeh…you can't let a few idiots put you off becoming what you're destined to be. But people here don't make fun of what you are, they make fun of what you say. You don't have to say that stuff to be who you are."

"No, you don't understand – I do. You know what gets me about this team? It's full of phonies. It's just crazy, I swear to God. Actually, this whole school, no, this whole country's like that. Everyone's just wearing a mask, pretending to be these things they aren't, because if you don't pretend, everyone will be on your case morning, noon and night, until you go nuts. Parents, teachers, your friends, everyone. They just want you to be like them. Or what they pretend to be. Perfect student, hard worker, always cheerful and enthusiastic, modest. Eventually, I couldn't stand it any more. I decided I would stop wearing the mask. I'd just say whatever came into my head. And it is fun. Now I drive them all nuts instead. It's my revenge."

"Nyeh…but that means you have no friends, either. Everyone needs friends, don't they?"

"Not friends like those guys. They're cowards. Or else they've just been beaten into submission and accept what they're told."

"Nyeh…but Tanaka-kun, you don't seem to have _any_ friends, full stop. And if that's what you think about your team-mates, why even bother being on the team? You'd have an easier life off it."

He looked at her seriously. "Because I want to prove that I'm a good baseball player. I know I've got it in me. I might not be able to do all the other things everyone expects, but I can do that."

"Nyeh…well, maybe if you can manage that, you'll get the best revenge. You won't need to make stuff up about yourself when you've actually achieved things, and people have to admit it."

Itsuki grinned. "Well, maybe. But thanks for listening, Miss Yumeno. I'm glad someone does. And I like you for being yourself too. You aren't a phony, anyway. Not like Miss Nakamura."

"Nyeh…I don't think she's faking being uninterested in her job, at any rate. Or being really interested in soap operas."

Itsuki grinned again, an irreverent, slightly crazy grin. "Oh, did she give you that story too? She's used it as an excuse to get out of coaching us before. But I once spotted her in a shop near here, and her trolley was full of booze. And if you stand close to her for long enough, you can smell it on her breath too. She's not a telly addict, she's a drunk!"

Himiko was so shocked, she actually held her hand to her mouth without thinking.

"Nyyyeehhh…oh my God! Tanaka-kun, stop joking! You can't say that sort of stuff about people! Miss Nakamura could get fired for that! Maybe even sent to a rehumiliation centre! "

He shook his head solemnly. "I'm not joking, Miss, it's all true. Loads of other kids know. The school probably know, but they I guess they don't want to do anything about it. Maybe they're too embarrassed to admit they have an alcoholic teaching here. Or maybe…"

Before he could finish, Miss Nakamura herself appeared around the corner in the corridor, being helped along by her male colleague. Ignoring Himiko and Itsuki, he banged on the nurse's office door and called. "Hello! Please excuse me, but this is urgent! Miss Nakamura has been taken ill!"

"…And then they hustled out the poor girl who was being treated and Miss Nakamura went in instead," Himiko told Tenko, later. "I took Tanaka-kun and the girl back to the baseball field and we met each other again there."

They had gone back to Tenko's flat after the end of the school day, and were sitting in her living room. It was a bare, functional space, with the traditional mats, where the most striking furnishings were Tenko's various pieces of practice equipment. The pair knelt on the floor in the old-fashioned style, which Himiko found rather uncomfortable, although Tenko seemed to have no problem with it at all.

Himiko had started to tell Tenko what had happened as soon as she got back to the baseball field, but before she could get far, Tenko had hushed her up and whispered that they should talk about it when they were safely off the premises. They spent quite a while comparing notes.

"Nyeh…it's really sad," said Himiko. "I thought she was just lazy and rude, but it seems Miss Nakamura really has got a problem after all. And everyone's just ignoring it."

Tenko had been quietly seething ever since the incident of that afternoon, and she couldn't control herself anymore. She sprang to her feet – which is not at all an easy feat when you're sitting in a kneeling position – and slammed her fist into a punchbag with a loud "HIIIIYYYAHHH!"

"I'll tell you what the problem is here!" she cried. "It's what the problem always is when women behave badly – degenerate males! I'll bet you anything that she started drinking when her boyfriend dumped her, or when she had to dump him for his degeneracy, or because guys all too interested in their pretend anime girlfriends to ask her out! It's men…they're always the problem!"

Himiko sighed. "Jeez, Tenko, this is too much. Nyeh…you're sounding just like a Lifetime Movie of the Week, you realise that? And I'm Japanese, so I don't even know what a Lifetime Movie of the Week is! Your misandry is strong enough to force people to make wildly culturally inappropriate references!"

Tenko glared back at her. "Oh, Himiko, you're so naïve sometimes! Look at what happens to us women all the time – on the streets, on trains, in offices! And who does it? It's not…it's not giant green parakeets, is it!"

"Nyeh…I've told you before, that might be true, but you see it all the time, whether it's there or not! You've got no idea why Miss Nakamura drinks too much! It might have nothing to do with men! You're just not living in the real world!"

Tenko's rage welled up inside her. " _I'm_ not living in the real world! How dare you say that to me! You walk around in a witch's hat and say you have magic powers! To everyone you meet, no matter how embarrassing that is for me or anyone else! You don't have magic powers – you can't even magic your way into getting your own college essays right! So how dare you criticise me for not living in the real world, Himiko Yumeno! You never have!"

There was a brief, but ominous silence. Then that was broken by a noise like an emergency siren going off.

"NNNNYYYYYEEEEHHHH!" wailed Himiko. She felt a physical pain in her chest, as if someone had stabbed her. Her eyes filled with tears, but they were of rage, not of sadness. She hauled herself awkwardly to her feet and grabbed her handbag. "That's it!" she shouted. "I'm done with this, Tenko, you don't get to treat me like that!" She headed towards the door, turned and shouted back. "To hell with you and your stupid work placement! You can finish it off on your own, if they let you. I'm not being friends with anyone who thinks I'm no more than a deluded embarrassment!"

Tenko felt sick. She reached out with imploring arms towards Himiko. "No…wait! I…I didn't mean that! Himko, come back! Please, don't leave me, Himiko!"

Himiko felt another stab of pain inside as she heard those words, but she carried on resolutely towards the door, propelled by rage and hurt. And then, before she could put her hand on the doorknob, the doorbell rang.

"Hello, Miss Chabashira? Can I come in? I need to see you," came a recognisable voice. Himiko stopped in her tracks and glanced back towards Tenko, who was standing behind her, arms still outstretched and tears now welling up in her eyes too. The voice was that of Miss Nakamura.

The minutes that followed were among the most embarrassing in the girls' young lives. Of course, Himiko could hardly storm out in the presence of a guest, so she had to sit back down on the floor again, while Tenko, as if walking on eggshells, made a pot of tea. Himiko hardly dared make eye contact with Tenko or Miss Nakamura, and the atmosphere in the small flat was tense, to say the least.

In normal circumstances, Miss Nakamura might have noticed all this, but clearly these were not normal circumstances. She had cleaned herself up, or been cleaned up, and apparently sobered up too, although the sunglasses she was wearing suggested she was still suffering from a thumping hangover. But besides that, she seemed nervous and ill-at-ease, like a hermit crab changing its shell.

"I got your address from the school secretary. They've given me a few days off to…recover. But I thought I should try to thank you, Miss Chabashira. You may have saved my life back there. Well, you and Mr Fujiwara. He's always been a good colleague to me."

"Think nothing of it," said Tenko, rather awkwardly. "I would have done the same for anyone."

"Well, maybe, but this time it was me you did it for," said Miss Nakamura.

Tenko flushed. She really wasn't used to this sort of situation. "Are you going to get treatment? For the drinking, I mean."

Miss Nakamura sighed. "It may be difficult…the treatment is expensive, and the school will not pay. They would not want it to become known that a teacher had been drinking too much. Maybe the teacher's union can help. I cannot talk to my parents about this. They would not understand why I would have let this happen to me."

"Why did it happen?" asked Tenko.

Miss Nakamura shook her head. "I don't really know myself. You've probably realised I wasn't happy with my work anymore. It's not like I was making much effort to hide it, honestly. But apart from that…have you ever read _The Outsider_ , the novel by Albert Camus?"

The girls both shook their heads. Neither were big readers of foreign literature.

"It's about a Frenchman in Algeria, back when it was a French colony, who shoots dead an Arab on the beach. And his only explanation for why he did it is that he was bothered by the heat and bright sunlight. Well, all I can say about why I started drinking is that, one day, I really, really felt like a drink. Even if that sounds trivial."

She carefully sipped at her tea. Tenko pulled out her bag and rootled around in the bottom for a while, eventually producing a laminated card with some writing and a phone number on it.

"Here," she said, handing it over to Miss Nakamura. "It's a free counselling service. It's not rehab, but they may be able to help you find proper treatment somewhere."

Miss Nakamura smiled. "Thank you. Where did you get this from?"

"Nyeh…a while back there were two suicides on campus, and the local press started getting interested," said Himiko. "I think the university authorities decided they needed to do something, so they handed those cards round to everybody."

Miss Nakamura finished her tea and said that she had to go. As she walked towards the door she turned back and said:-

"You're nice girls. Don't let anyone or anything stop you from caring for other people, or each other. There isn't a world surplus of kind-heartedness, you know."

For a moment after she left, they were silent. Then Tenko turned to Himiko and said:-

"I'm sorry."

"Nyeh…me too."

"Kiss me, Himiko. Please." It was a very, very long kiss, immediately followed by a long and intense conversation exploring issues the two had previously left to one side.

"Nyeh…am I really that annoying about magic?" asked Himiko, later.

"Well, sometimes you mention it a bit much in public," said Tenko. "But I'd still miss you if you weren't around. And do I really go on about men being evil that much?"

"Nyeh…you really wouldn't believe it. Perhaps we need to keep all that stuff a bit more to ourselves than we have."

"Yeah, perhaps we should. And we should talk more, too."

"Nyeh…definitely. I'm looking forward to more conversations as soon as possible, to be honest. Nyeh…maybe right now even…"

Near the end of Tenko's work placement, the baseball team played a friendly match against the team of a nearby middle school, arranged largely as a result of Tenko pestering the head to set it up until he caved in and agreed. A small crowd of parents and friends of team members turned out sit in the crumbling bleachers to cheer the players on. Although Miss Nakamura didn't feel she could come, she sent Tenko a card with a supportive message which Tenko insisted on reading out to the team before they took to the field.

She also insisted on telling them that "I told you we would kick some butt, and that time is now! The butt faces you out there, and the choice is yours – kick it hard or live forever with the shame of knowing that you left butt unkicked when you might have sent it flying into the air and off into the far distance to disappear with a flash of light not really explicable by any natural phenomenon! So go out to face your destiny, team!"

Everyone looked at each other after this and silently agreed that regardless of the other ways Miss Chabashira had progressed as a coach, she really needed to work on her inspirational speeches. Not to mention her extended metaphors. The other side were riding fairly high in the local league that the school team hadn't even been playing in, so the fact that they eventually managed to force a draw mostly came down to two factors.

The first was the steady and disciplined pitching of Yomi Kimura which led to several of the other side's best batters striking out when they would not normally had. And the second was Itsuki Tanaka, who came up to bat at a crucial point, glared at the other team's pitcher and loudly informed him that "I am Dirk Diamond! Laugh all you like, I'm going to make that name one you never forget as long as you play baseball!"

"What the hell…?" muttered the pitcher, who was a good player but not one who had generally faced open attempts at psychological warfare from thirteen-year-olds.

Unnerved at apparently facing some kind of dangerous lunatic, he sent Itsuki an easy delivery that allowed the latter to blast the ball off into the distance and blaze around the bases for a home run. As he came round and finished running, he shouted "Dirk Diamond! Remember it!" at the traumatised pitcher, only to be simutaneously told off by the umpire, Tenko and his exasperated father, who was in the crowd.

At the end of the match, Yomi was swamped by other players and crowd members congratulating him. Itsuki's fanbase was a bit more select, but he did get a couple of his teammates shaking his hand, Rin whispering, "Well done, Tanaka-kun!" and a slap on the back from Himiko (which probably pleased him more than anything else).

Nodding towards Yomi, and the throng around him, he told her: "One day, that'll be me, I'm telling you."

Although Tenko didn't get top marks for her work placement, the reports back from the school were good enough to keep her course tutor happy. Soon afterwards, she decided to take a bit of her own advice and started discreetly attending the counselling service she had recommended to Miss Nakamura, for help with anger management. She did insist on only seeing a woman counsellor, though.

Himiko, over time, started limiting mentions of her magic powers to actual performances. She did carry on dressing as a witch, though, because "Nyeh…it's just my style, you know…I wouldn't be the same without it." They're currently planning on moving in together, once their tenancies expire. Himiko's next challenge, though, is finishing, without any help, an essay on the topic – "Yukio Mishima: just what was that guy's whole deal?"


End file.
